7: Alpha Centauri
Author: Chaoseternus
Chapter 9: Digging, digging and… Digging!
Alpha Prime: Entering Unidentified cavern
Felix cursed as another Paladin passed over the heads of his team, almost blowing him off his feet, despite the heavy load he was carrying. The whole area was being evacuated; even some of the heavier equipment was having to be moved to reduce the load on the thin weakened cavern roof. And he and his team were expected to just calmly drop into a cavern whose roof could drop on them at any time, 'just bloody perfect' he thought.
"Right" he turned as they finally reached the burnt-out remnants of a smoke flare that marked their objective, "we've got 3 meters to shovel down, so drop your stuff, preferably on the solid side on this flare, and grab your shovels 'cos we're going digging" "3 meters?!?" Captain Brown RSG-1 cursed, "kind of the General to leave that minor detail out of the briefing""Cut the sarcasm, Brown. Grab my pack and dump it self, I'll start marking where we need to dig" Felix replied. "Aye sir" Brown replied, grabbing the pack off Felix's back, which was heavy enough to make him, a seasoned EOD man curse, and began striding towards the 'safe' area, beyond the cavern as per orders. Felix might not be part of the military chain of command but he was the expert as far as breeching the cavern was concerned, and for that matter breeching it safely, and so his orders would not be questioned… unless a military situation cropped up. And Felix had chosen this location for the insertion, on the edge of the cavern where the cavern roof was unusually thin, but supported by the thick rock just a meter or two to the left, and the whole cavern roof in this area being more stable than most according to the sensor sweeps, making it the perfect place to insert into the cavern. The team, Mining Engineer Felix, Miners Evans, Dafyis and Williston, and RSG-1 began the slow laborious task of shovelling into the cavern below, pausing every hour to shore up the sides of their shaft, all the while cursing, and wishing that mechanical diggers could be used safely, without fear of collapsing the already fragile cavern roof. "Just for the record, if this cavern is supposed to be so fragile, how come you were able to sink not one but two shafts right into its centre, not only not noticing how fragile the area was but without dropping into the cavern itself" Major Tobias asked, wiping the sweat from her face. "Two things, first we dropped the first shaft right into the middle of a massive support column right in the centre of the cavern, and so never noticed any weakness or any cavern, and that's also part of the reason why the cavern is so fragile, we compromised its main support column. The second, incomplete shaft skirted the edge of the column all the time, and that is why it was abandoned, it was digging into noticeably weak material" Felix rose up, resting his arms on his hovel for a minute whilst he ran his eyes around the shaft they were digging, checking for any potential safety problems. He nodded, satisfied, and turned to Tobias, "we could have gone into the cavern that away, except that latest bumper 3 hours ago triggered the collapse of that shaft. And the main shaft is already gone, so we get to investigate the cavern itself whilst Angharad leads a rescue team in through the main ventilation, which sits just five meters outside the cavern, luckily" Felix glanced at the cavern walls again, "We're roughly two and a half meters down now, we'll need to start standing on the scaffolding, the floor won't be strong enough to hold us much longer" "Joy" Brown dripped heavy irony into his voice as the team dropped their shovels, and started adding the digging platform to the scaffolding that was keeping the surrounding mud and dirt from refilling their hole.